Daybreak (6 page)

Homer Rice was in the graduate school working toward an MBA when they met. She had seen him a few times walking across the campus, and once, for no particular reason, someone had pointed him out in passing.

“There goes Bud Rice. He was a great quarterback a few years ago. He looks it, doesn’t he?”

Powerful, was the word. He was large, tall and broad without a trace of fat. He might have been a symbol of good health in an advertisement for nutritious food; his skin was pink, and his strong teeth, well displayed by a short upper lip, were so flawless that one might believe they were false.

She knew that he had observed her. And one warm spring day when she was alone on a step reading an assignment, he came over to her and introduced himself.

“My name’s Bud Rice. I’ve been noticing you for a long time. I’d have gone up to you if you hadn’t always been in a crowd or if I’d had more nerve.”

This shyness, especially on the part of a football star, surprised her. He was almost humble. And so she replied
with special gentleness. “My name’s Laura Paige. I’d have been glad to talk to you.”

“Would you? A girl who looks like you sort of—well, sort of makes a man hesitate. Mind if I sit down?”

“Of course not. Come on. I’ve no class until three.”

By the end of an hour when they parted, Laura had learned probably as much about Bud as, in those days, there was to know. He came from the real backcountry, where his father was the pastor of a small church. She had seen enough of those to picture a board structure probably in need of paint, on a two-lane blacktop highway at the edge of a crossroads village. She had read enough to feel the shuddering poverty and bleak isolation. And from that place he had managed to win a scholarship, had then earned honors and also earned money by doing odd jobs, enough to pay for the MBA. He was ambitious and earnest; his respectfulness and his formal, old-fashioned courtesy were “backcountry.” He was certainly different, and therefore interesting. Deciding that she liked him, she agreed to see him again.

Her friends were impressed. It was “cool” to have a boyfriend in graduate school, a person who already had his feet poised to go out into the world of real jobs, of adult responsibilities. Maybe it was the admiration that he inspired in her friends that made Laura keep on seeing him; often, later, she thought about that. Certainly there had never been any leap of the heart.…

Then, too, she had been wooed by his own open admiration. “You know so many things I never even heard about,” he said one night after she had taken him to a concert.

When she asked him whether he had enjoyed it, he
gave a candid answer. “I can’t say I liked it, but I didn’t mind it too much, either. I guess that high-class music is something I should learn about,” he said with his appealing white smile.

“Why should you?” And wanting to be very kind in return for his simple honesty, she added, “A person should like what he likes. There’s no need to please other people.”

“But I’d like to please you, Laura. I’ve had girls run after me, you know. Mostly because of the football business, which is absurd, isn’t it? And yet, absurd as it is, I’ve enjoyed it. I’ve just enjoyed being wanted. I suppose it’s natural, isn’t it? Maybe it’s because I can’t be sure of what you think of me that I—” He floundered and stopped.

She was both flattered and touched by such confusion in someone who was otherwise so alert and competent, so sure of himself. He was a straight-A student, could do incredibly fast calculations right in his head, followed every trend in politics and finance—all areas where she felt stupidly blind—and yet there was such
esteem
in his long look at her.

“What I think of you? Why, if I didn’t like you, Bud, I wouldn’t be sitting here with you.”

She was arch, she was flirting, but nevertheless, she was telling the truth.

“How about going out to the country for lunch on Saturday? I can borrow a car.”

“I can’t. My aunts are getting up at the crack of dawn to be here in time for lunch.” When she saw his disappointment, she made a quick offer. “But I’d love to have you join us at the hotel.”

“That’s awfully nice. I think I’ll be in the way, though.”

Although she had instantly regretted the invitation, there was only one thing to say. “Of course you won’t be. Do come. I only hope you won’t be bored.”

“Bored? No,” he said in his proper way. “I’ll be pleased to meet your aunts.”

Bud and the aunts took to each other at once. To begin with, he looked as if he were going to church in his good dark blue suit and paisley tie. Cecile and Lillian, who had no doubt expected to meet a college boy in jeans, would approve of this businesslike appearance, Laura knew, for she had often enough heard their disgusted exclamations over what they called “radical youth” with their ponytails.

“Clean jeans are one thing,” remarked Aunt Lillian. “That’s just comfort and informality. But the scenes you see on television at some of those northern colleges make you wonder where we’re all heading.”

Bud agreed. “On this campus, it’s law and order. That’s why I like it. I guess I’ll be sorry to leave it next year.”

The talk was lively, and Laura settled back to listen. Bud presented himself well. He was interested in hearing how the two women had taken charge of the family business, and they were interested in his theories; concepts of taxation, the free market, and debt reduction passed across the table. At ease in his knowledge, Bud was impressive.

“The corporate recruiters will be coming, and you’ll have your choice, I’m sure,” Cecile said.

“Well, ma’am, I sure hope so.”

They would like that “ma’am,” thought Laura. It was falling out of use these days, but the son of a country preacher hadn’t yet found that out.

When the lunch was over, the aunts agreed that he
was a fine young man, so friendly, so polite, and so smart.

“Shrewd,” said Lillian. “He’ll do well, no question about that.”

“Are you serious with him at all?” asked Cecile.

Laura frowned. “Good God, no. I’m not ‘serious’ with anybody. I have lots of dates. Lots.”

Cecile was apologetic. “Naturally you do, dear. Why shouldn’t you be popular? A girl like you with all your talents, piano, tennis, and so pretty and sweet besides.” Wistfully, she sighed. “I never can stop thinking how happy you would have made your parents.”

Lillian returned to the subject. “He surely is good-looking, Laura.”

“In a way.”

“ ‘In a way!’ So tall and so manly, with that head of bright hair and everything about him so neat and clean? If I were your age—” And Lillian laughed at herself.

“I always think,” Laura mused, “that he looks sort of military.”

“Military? What does that mean?”

“Oh, spit and polish. Stand up straight.”

“Your own father was a military man,” Lillian said somewhat sharply. “I can’t imagine what you’re thinking of.”

Actually, she was thinking of Francis. She had been trying so hard not to think of him and had been remarkably successful. But now, in this instant, for no particular reason, he returned to her with his flashing dark eyes, his fervor, and his delicacy that was at the same time so completely masculine.…

He had gone with a medical group to India, and evidently in a rare mood to write a long letter, had sent
her six pages of exuberant description. In reply, she reminded him of a letter he had sent to her years before when he had visited a “treasure island” in the Caribbean Sea.
The world is so beautiful, you can’t imagine, Laura
, he had written then. And he had written it now again.

Yes, even here among the violence and filth, the fearful diseases, some of these people are so beautiful in body and in spirit
.

He wrote that he would be home in the summer. There was no vacation trip that year.

“I’ve been away since September, and now I want to be home,” Laura told the aunts, and they agreed.

She acquired a few pupils and began to give piano lessons. She went swimming and saw friends. Bud Rice took a summer job about two hours’ drive away, but several times on weekends he came for the day, always with chocolates for Laura and flowers for the aunts, huge heads of crimson peonies that Cecile would arrange in the center of the luncheon table.

There that first time in filtered green light from the half-drawn blinds, in the cool dining room, they spent a pleasant hour over Betty Lee’s shrimp salad and lime pie. The aunts pressed several servings on Bud and fussed over him.

He thanked them. “You’re awfully good to me. I’m not used to being fussed over. My mother died when I was seven.”

Cecile said gently, “You and Laura. Except that she had us.”

Bud smiled at Laura. “Lucky you.”

The aunts asked questions.

“Do you have a family, or just your father?”

“Just my father. I had a sister, but she died when she was three years old.”

The aunts made sympathetic faces and Cecile observed, “You haven’t had an easy life, I see that.”

“That’s true, ma’am. But a lot of people have had it much worse. I’m healthy, I’m getting a good education, and I’m ready to meet the world.” He laughed. “I’m out to make some money. But no tricks. I mean the good American way, fair and square.” He looked around the table. “I hope I’m not shocking you with the admission.”

Lillian almost snorted. “Quite the reverse. I have no respect for pious denials. You can’t do anything without money in this world, and that’s why everyone wants it.”

And Laura read her mind: Now, there’s a young man who could take over the business. Poor aunts! They were transparent.

They showed him through the house, related its history, to which he listened with great interest, and paused before the photographs.

“That’s Laura’s father. He was killed in Korea.”

“Died for his country,” Bud said. “You can be proud, Laura.”

“I’d say that Bud Rice is a catch,” Lillian remarked that night. “Some girl’s going to get hold of him before long, you can count on it.”

Such an old-fashioned concept, to think of “getting hold” of a man! And Laura said, “She’s welcome to him.”

“Don’t tell me you don’t like him!”

“I do like him well enough. I wouldn’t have let him come here if I didn’t, would I? Only—”

Not in the mood for explanations, she stopped.

“Only what?”

“There’s more to people than what you can see, isn’t there, Aunt Lillian?”

Immediately, Lillian pursued the subject. “What do you mean? He respects you, I hope.”

“Respect” in the aunts’ vocabulary meant “no sex.”

“Yes, he respects me.” And she recalled a crude attempt—she thought of such attempts as “wrestling matches”—that he had once made, and having been thwarted, had never made since.

“I am simply not going to let you,” she had told him.

She had never “let” anyone yet. They might go so far and no farther. It had been quite a feat in 1971 for a nineteen-year-old woman to be still a virgin.

Bud had yielded. “All right. I’ll wait. You’re going to marry me, Laura. You don’t know it now, but you are going to. So I’ll wait.”

In the middle of August, Francis Alcott came home.

“It’ll be good to see him again. It’s been almost four years,” said Cecile. “Can you believe it, Laura?”

Yes, she believed it and remembered it well. Fifteen, and so childish that night! He must have seen that she was preening before him even while she was hoping to display her calm new maturity. But how absurdly she had posed in the big chair, thrusting under his very nose her manicured nails, her lace-flowered cuffs, and her “sophisticated” low neck, while all the time her heart was jumping so that it might just as well have been visible under the velvet dress.

“Dr. and Mrs. Alcott want us to come over this evening. They’re having a little welcome home for Francis, just relatives and old friends,” Cecile announced at lunchtime.

Laura looked down at her plate. “You go without me,” she said.

Both aunts were astonished. “Without you? But why?”

“I won’t know their relatives, and I hardly know Francis anymore, so what’s the point?” This retort, given in a high-pitched voice so unlike her natural voice, contained a note of petulance that did not belong to her.

“Is it that you have a date, dear?” asked Cecile. “Something you’d rather do?”

“I’d just rather stay home.”

“All wrong,” objected Lillian, “when Dr. Alcott never even forgets flowers on your birthday. Really, Laura. Really.”

Cecile rose from the table and drew back the curtains. “Look! They’re hanging Japanese lanterns over there. What a lovely night for a party! Do get dressed up, Laura. You’ll have a good time. You haven’t worn that new white dress yet, and summer’s almost over.”

She was in great confusion, caught between a strange dread of seeing Francis and the challenge of letting him behold what she had become. For a moment or two, she was unable to answer them. And then, deciding that the dread was after all unreasonable, she told them that she would go.

Upstairs in her room she put on the white dress, red slippers, and the pearls that the aunts had given her for her last birthday. Her grandmother’s pier glass told her that this was one of the “good” days that every woman has, in contrast to the days when nothing about herself is pleasing. Her eyes were large, her hair hung in long curves, and the white silk skirt swayed with grace when she moved.

Across the lawn and through the gap in the hedge that had never been filled in, the three women walked toward the lights and voices. There was laughter; it seemed to Laura that she recognized the gaiety of Francis’s laugh among the rest. And the blood rushed up into her face.

He had been standing in the center of a circle. When he saw her, he broke the circle, came toward her with outstretched hands, and gave a little cry. “Laura! Laura!”

Everyone turned to look at her, and she was exposed. All her planned poise evaporated and, foolishly, she gave him her hand to shake.

“Oh no, a handshake? For me?” And he pulled her to him, pulled her into a warm, strong embrace. He whirled her about as if to display her with pride. “This girl, excuse me, this young woman, has been my friend since she was four years old. These are my cousins from Monmouth, you’ve never met, this is Mary, Don, my uncle Dave, Laura Paige, Miss Lillian and Miss Cecile, you people remember each other—”